So here we are again, the second Sunday of Lent, and, as we do on each second Sunday of Lent, we hear the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus. Jesus appears to his disciples as he truly is. The fullness of Jesus’ true nature is briefly revealed to them. While we don’t know the subject of the conversation between Jesus and the prophets in both Matthew and Mark’s account of the story, in Luke’s account of this story, Moses and Elijah are relating to Jesus the suffering and death he will endure when he reaches Jerusalem. However, this is alluded to in Matthew and Mark’s stories when Jesus tells the disciples NOT to say anything about the Transfiguration until after Jesus has died and rises from the dead. So how does this impact you and me?
Scripture tells us that we are made in the image and likeness of God. The radiance of light revealed in Jesus at his Transfiguration is a part of our lives, too. In fact, God’s radiance is present in all of Creation.
St Francis of Assisi believed in the universality of God present in all things, mineral, air, water, animal, and human. His beautiful Canticle of the Sun, is all about the glory of God being revealed in the Sun, the Moon, the rain, snow, wind, earth, fire, and all of created life. God is incarnate in all the world around us, but God is especially incarnate in you and in me. It is this that is revealed to the disciples on Mount Tabor at the transfiguration of Jesus, the fullness of God’s incarnation in Jesus.
God’s incarnation, that dazzling whiteness revealed in Jesus, God reveals in your life and mine. That incarnation came with us in our birth. We didn’t earn it. We can choose to acknowledge and accept it. We can also choose to reject it.
As this is revealed to its fullness in Jesus’ death and resurrection, so often, the same is revealed to us in our own paschal mystery, our own suffering and resurrection. We need not seek out suffering. No one escapes some form of suffering in life. For some of us it may come in the form of an injury or an illness, physical, emotional, and mental. We experience suffering in the loss of relationships in our lives, for instance, the loss of a loved one or spouse in death, or the loss of a spouse and significant people in the process of a divorce. It may be the suffering associated with the loss of a job, or having to relocate to a different community. Our suffering may come in a loss of health.
Whatever form suffering may take in our lives, it has a way of stripping away the non-essentials in our lives. When our lives are stripped down to the essentials by our sufferings, we find our lives transformed and transfigured. We discover, by necessity or coercion, that which is truly important in our lives. The stripping away of the non-essentials allows the glory of God’s presence to shine all the more brightly in our lives.
So, for this second week of Lent, something upon which to reflect is doing an interior search of ourselves for the presence of God in our lives. Is there something, some non-essential in our lives that is covering up or clouding the revelation of God’s glory in our lives? If we have undergone some suffering in our lives, in whatever form that may have taken, how has that suffering pointed to something greater in our lives? How has our suffering revealed the glory of God in our lives?
God does not will anything evil in the world. God does not will people to suffer. God did not will Jesus to suffer and die. In his suffering and in his death, Jesus revealed his solidarity with all of humanity. Suffering is a part of life. Suffering will come to all of us. What is important when suffering occurs in our lives is to not ask the question, “Why?” or, “Why is God being so cruel to me?” The question to ask when we undergo suffering is, “As God was revealed to the world in the suffering and death of Jesus, how is God being revealed in my own suffering?” Jesus’ path to the glory of the resurrection was through his suffering. Let us also be reassured that ultimately, our own suffering will lead to the same glory.
